It is “Inside Everton” week all week on Bleacher Report. To kick things off, we sat down with three of the best players in the club’s history to talk about the club and what makes it unique within English football.
FINCH FARM, Halewood — In the long and illustrious history of Everton Football Club, few players have been as successful, and indeed as beloved, as Graeme Sharp.
A talented 19-year-old when the Toffees signed him from Dumbarton in 1980, Sharp went on to help the club through arguably its most successful period, during which they won the First Division (the precursor to the Premier League) twice, in 1985 and 1987, along with a famous FA Cup win in 1984 and, a year later, the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
In total, Sharp played for the club for 11 years—finishing as the club’s top goalscorer in four seasons—before returning to the club as an ambassador at the turn of the millennium, a role he has reveled in ever since.
The demands of such a post have grown exponentially in recent times, however, leading the club to appoint two other club legends, Ian Snodin and Graham Stuart, to join Sharp. Stuart enjoyed his own special moments at the club—scoring the goals that kept Everton in the Premier League against Wimbledon in 1994 and helping the club win the FA Cup a year later—while Snodin played briefly with both players during seven years at the club, during which he enjoyed a special rapport with the fans.
Bleacher Report sat down with all three men to talk about their relationship with Everton, their thoughts on the club’s current progress and, inevitably, the rivalry with Liverpool and how they see this weekend’s derby panning out.
Bleacher Report: Despite all growing up in different parts of the country, you seem to have found a home with Everton as both players and, now, as ambassadors. What makes the club so special?
Graeme Sharp: As Alan Ball once said, ‘Once the club has touched you, you will never be the same.’ I have really fond memories of playing for Everton, and yes, I was probably more successful than many others, but I think we all recognise it’s a very passionate, very proud group of supporters.
People say football is a matter of life and death, but it really is here. You’re born a blue or a red, everything involved with your life—births, marriages, funerals—all revolve around the club as well, so it grabs a hold of you.
Graham Stuart: In London, you’ve got Arsenal, you’ve got Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United [and] others. So the intensity of it all isn’t what it is up on Merseyside. And that’s the thing I always go back to.
I’m not suggesting for one second that fans of those clubs aren’t as passionate about their side as Evertonians are, but in terms of geography, it being [just] Liverpool and Everton [up here] does make it bigger. It is a special honour to turn out at Goodison Park week in and week out.
Ian Snodin: I was born in Yorkshire, spent most of my younger playing days at Doncaster Rovers and went to Leeds for 18 months before I signed for Everton. From the first week that I was here, though, you could tell.
Everton were successful then, they had a great side in the 1980s—I managed to scrap a championship medal—but joining a successful Everton team, the fanbase was fantastic, the atmosphere was fantastic, and even though we had some disappointing times as well, the fans have always made it a big club in my eyes.
It’s called the ‘People’s Club,’ and it really is. The fans are fantastic here. You don’t realise until you play for the club what it means to be part of the club. I’m enjoying it just as much now, being an ambassador, as I did as a player.